Over the years we’ve reviewed dozens of different meat delivery boxes but none of them are as well-known as Omaha Steaks.

Chances are you’ve either received Omaha Steaks as a gift, you’ve given it as a gift, or you’ve at least seen their ads. This is because they’re one of the oldest meat delivery services out there. But does that make them the best?

Today we’re unboxing, taste testing, and reviewing Omaha Steaks to find out if one of the oldest meat delivery services is really worth it.

History Of Omaha Steaks

 

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The story of Omaha Steaks starts, not in the United States, but rather in Latvia.

The future founders fled their home country of Latvia due to religious persecution and ended up settling in Omaha, Nebraska. Since they had experience working in the meat industry back in their home country, they decided to open a local butcher shop called “Table Supply Meat Company” in 1917.

Due to immense popularity in the town, the company began growing and in 1952 they became one of the first butchers to advertise mail order steaks in magazines.

In 1966 they changed their name is Omaha Steaks and continued to grow the mail order business, which is how most people know of their business today.

The Types Of Food Omaha Steaks Offers

Our Omaha Steaks Foods

While “steaks” are in their name, Omaha Steaks offers way more than just steak. In fact, they offer nearly every cut of beef, chicken, turkey, and pork imaginable. But that’s just a portion of the foods they offer. They also now offer seafood, pastas, sides, desserts, and even wine.

To give you an idea of the immense variety they offer, here are some of their most popular foods they sell from each category:

Steaks

  • Filet Mignons
  • Strip Steaks
  • Top Sirloins
  • Ribeyes

Chicken

  • Whole chicken
  • Chicken breasts
  • Chicken tenders
  • Chicken wings

Pork

  • Pork chops
  • Pulled pork
  • Pork tenderloins

Seafood

  • Salmon
  • Cod
  • Sole
  • Tuna
  • Halibut
  • Grouper

Other Meats

  • Burgers
  • Hot dogs, Bratwursts & Sausages
  • Roasts
  • Turkey
  • Ham
  • Lamb
  • Veal
  • Ribs

Appetizers

  • Crab cakes
  • Mini hot dogs
  • Mini lobster grilled cheese
  • Filet mignon sliders

Sides

  • Roasted mashed potatoes
  • Brussels sprouts with bacon and shallots
  • Roasted mixed vegetables
  • Pepper jack risotto cakes

Desserts

  • Caramel custard
  • Chocolate chip cookies
  • Toffee cake
  • Pumpkin pie

The examples above are really just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, I found one of the hardest parts of ordering to be deciding what to get.

While they offer a lot of meats that you cook, a good portion of the items they offer are premade foods (like the appetizers, sides, and desserts).

This enormous variety, coupled with their premade options makes Omaha Steaks a great option for special occasions where you may need to feed a lot of people a nice dinner but you don’t want to have to spend hours cooking everything. Emily and I have considered using Omaha Steaks for when we host future family holidays.

The Ordering Process

Omaha Steaks is not like a typical meal kit or meal delivery service in its ordering process. There is no subscription. However, Omaha Steaks knows that their service is used by people who want to order food for themselves and as gifts for friends and family so on every product page they include a dropdown box to select where you want the food to be delivered to. I bring this up because I have inadvertently selected “ship to someone else” when ordering before and want to save people the headache of having to edit everything in the checkout process.

The nice thing about this dropdown option is that it allows you to order for yourself and as a gift for someone else all in one order rather than two different orders. If you have some items in your cart that are to be shipped to you and to be shipped to someone else, you simply fill out both addresses and confirm the products for each delivery at checkout.

Where Does Omaha Steaks Source Their Meat?

Unfortunately, Omaha Steaks does not make it clear exactly where they source their meats from. Even in their blog article here where they talk about why their beef is better, they don’t exactly mention where it comes from. They speak very vaguely about how they select the beef and where it comes from. All of this is a bit discerning considering that Omaha Steaks markets themselves as high-quality meat but fail to mention what makes them high-quality.

Meat Quality & Grading

Cooking Our Omaha Steaks Filet Mignon Burgers

One red flag I ran into when researching Omaha Steaks is that they don’t share the grade of beef they use.

If you’re unfamiliar, the USDA grade shields are quality grades used in the beef industry to help people understand the class of beef their getting.

  • Prime beef is from young, well-fed cattle. It generally has a lot of fat or “marbling”.
  • Choice beef is high quality but has less fat than prime beef.
  • Select beef is the leanest beef.
  • Standard and Commercial grades of beef are usually sold as ungraded or as store brand meat.

Food Box HQ Note: In researching the beef grading process, I stumbled upon this YouTube video of how it’s done. It’s long but very informative.

Another red flag I ran into when researching Omaha Steaks meat quality is that no where do they mention if their meats have hormones or antibiotics. In fact, I literally searched the entire site and couldn’t find any mention of hormones and only one product page (Butcher’s Cut Chicken Breast) that mentions no antibiotics were used in raising the animal.

What We Received In Our Recent Box

Here’s a look at what we received in our most recent box, along with our thoughts on taste and quality of each.

Filet Mignon Burgers ($19.99 for 4 5.3 oz burgers)

These tasted good but something about the texture seemed “off”. Maybe it was because they tasted like filet mignon but had the texture of a regular ground beef burger. They were all very succulent and juicy but almost too much so due to the 75/25 lean-to-fat ratio. Would I order them again? Probably not because I’m a bit of a boring eater as it is. I’ll just stick to 80/20 lean-to-fat ratio ground beef burgers. Emily really enjoyed them so if you’re looking for a “fancy” juicy burger, these could be worth trying.

Italian Chicken Fingers ($27.99 for 3 lbs)

These chicken fingers came premade, we just needed to heat them up in the oven. These surprised me with how much flavor they have. On the outside they look like regular chicken fingers you can get at any fast food place. However, these are marinated with a delicious Italian seasoning.

Bacon-Wrapped Chicken Breasts ($24.99 for 4 8 oz breasts)

It’s hard to go wrong with bacon-wrapped anything and these were another winner. High fat, high salt, and pure deliciousness. It was hard to eat more than a few of these because they’re very rich and salty.

Butternut Squash Risotto ($14.99 for 20 oz)

This side came out very creamy and rich due to the heavy use of mascarpone cheese. The flavor that took me by surprise was the sweetness of it. At first I thought it might be the squash but then I read the packaging and realized they add maple syrup to it. It’s not overly sweet. I found it to be quite a nice pairing with the creamy richness of the risotto.

Filet Mignon Pastry Bites ($14.99 for 12 pieces)

These are one of the foods you can see us make and taste test in our video review above. For being frozen, these came out delicious. The pastry still had a light crispy and flakey texture, which surprised me for something that was frozen and simply reheated in the oven. The inside filet was juicy and savory. It’s definitely something I would order again, especially as an appetizer to be passed out at a party or family get together.

Bone-In New York Strips ($59.99 for 2 14 oz steaks)

Every steak I’ve had from Omaha Steaks has been a winner (as you can see from our first review back in 2017). This steak was too. It’s important to note that the taste of the steak is dependent on the quality of meat and how it’s cooked. We make sure to not overcook any steaks to preserve the flavor. So this means staying between the rare to medium-rare levels. Here is a great video on how to perfectly cook a steak that I found very informative.

Chocolate Molten Lava Cakes  ($13.99 for 4 4.2 oz cakes)

This dessert was incredible. If you watched the video above, you’ll see when we cut into the cake the “molten” chocolate inside literally pours out. It was very decadent and rich without being overly sweet. Emily and I actually had to split one between ourselves because, while small, they’re very filling.

Omaha Steaks Delivery

Omaha Steaks has shipped all of our boxes using Fedex. While we’ve never had any issues with orders getting delivered, I have noticed that it takes longer to be delivered than many other meal delivery services take.

For example, we ordered our last box on April 15th and it wasn’t delivered until April 22nd. The box didn’t spend that whole time being delivered, it just took Omaha Steaks nearly a week just to ship out our order.

Learn from our experience—be sure to order at least one week before you actually need your Omaha Steaks food.

Omaha Steaks Packaging

Omaha Steaks Packaging

Omaha Steaks ships all of their packages using styrofoam. This is great for keeping all of the food inside cold but it’s pretty terrible for the environment.

To keep the food frozen, Omaha Steaks packs in a hefty amount of dry ice. Be super careful when removing food from your packaging, you do not want to touch the dry ice as it can burn you. I’ve had a few close encounters removing foods from boxes before and even barely touching it has stung my hand before.

All of the meat is vacuum sealed. The sides, appetizers, and desserts are all wrapped in plastic.

Why Is Everything Shipped Frozen?

Omaha Steaks uses flash freezing to keep the food from spoiling as it makes its way from them to you.

The process of flash freezing is actually an important part of maintaining the quality of the meat. Any type of freezing is going to cause ice crystals to form inside the meat, which can tear into the muscle cell walls as they grow. When thawed, these damaged cells end up resulting in drier (less juicy) meat.

By flashing freezing meat, it minimizes the size and amount of ice crystals on the outside of the meat (which freezes first) and leaves the inside with some larger ice crystals (since it freezes last).

While freezing in general is not great at maintaining the flavor and quality of meat, flash freezing or “rapid freezing” is the best option.

Omaha Steaks vs. The Competition

Cooking Our Omaha Steaks Filet Mignons

While Omaha Steaks was the first, there are a lot of meat delivery services out there these days. Here are the meat delivery services that are most comparable to Omaha Steaks:

  • Snake River Farms: If you’re looking for American wagyu beef, Snake River Farms is the way to go. They’re one of the few meat delivery companies that offers American wagyu beef and, while expensive, it is absolutely delicious. We first reviewed and taste tested their meat back in 2018 and I was very impressed with the flavor and quality. However, Snake River Farms does not offer as much variety as Omaha Steaks.
  • Kansas City Steaks: This meat delivery company is nearly identical to Omaha Steaks in terms of what they offer, even down to the website and brand. Both sell all types of meat (steak, beef, chicken, pork, turkey, fish) as well as sides, appetizers, and desserts. They also offer gift bundles like Omaha Steaks. The biggest difference is that Omaha Steaks has way more variety.
  • Crowd Cow: Like Omaha Steaks, Crowd Cow has a lot of variety in terms of meats, sides, desserts, and even plant-based proteins. They sell all the same types of meat (beef, chicken, pork, turkey, and seafood) as well as game meat such as boar, duck, and elk. Like Snake River Farms, Crowd Cow also offers wagyu beef.
  • Porter Road: Porter Road is easily one of the highest quality meat delivery companies out there. They’re one of the few that does not freeze their meats when they send them to you. This is because, as mentioned above, freezing compromises the quality and flavor of the meat.
  • Rastelli’s: Rastelli’s is one of my personal favorite meat delivery companies. They offer all the same meats and cuts as Omaha Steaks (beef, pork, turkey, chicken, and seafood) as well as many precooked meat options (such as meatballs and ribs). In addition, they offer more niche options like beef wellington and turkey roulade. They’re also very open and transparent about their sourcing practices.

As you can probably tell, the running theme when comparing Omaha Steaks against their competitors is Omaha Steaks offers the most variety but many other meat delivery services offer higher quality and more niche food options.

Price Comparison

One of the biggest issues most people have with Omaha Steaks is that they are expensive. In my own experience, I have found that to be true. To be fair though, many other high-end meat delivery services are also expensive.

To get a better idea of how Omaha Steaks stacks up in terms of price, let’s compare the 3 most popular cuts of steak (filet mignon, boneless strip, and ribeye) among Omaha Steaks and the competitors I listed above.

Filet Mignon Pricing

  • Omaha Steaks: At $74.99 for 4 5 oz filets, that comes out to $3.75 per oz.
  • Snake River Farms: At $31 for 2 4 oz filets, that comes out to $3.87 per oz.
  • Kansas City Steaks: At $94.95 for 4 6 oz filets, that comes out to $3.95 per oz.
  • Crowd Cow: At $16.99 for 1 6 oz filet, that comes out to $2.86 per oz.
  • Porter Road: At $19 for 1 0.5 lb (8 oz) filet, that comes out to $2.38 per oz.
  • Rastelli’s: At $119 for 4 8 oz filets, that comes out to $3.72 per oz.

Boneless Strip Pricing

  • Omaha Steaks: At $79.99 for 4 8 oz strips, that comes out to $2.50 per oz.
  • Snake River Farms: At $30 for 1 12 oz strip, that comes out to $2.50 per oz.
  • Kansas City Steaks: At $85.95 for 4 8 oz strips, that comes out to $2.69 per oz.
  • Crowd Cow: At $20 for 1 12 oz strip, that comes out to $1.67 per oz.
  • Porter Road: At $21 for 1 0.75 lb (12 oz) strip, that comes out to $1.75 per oz.
  • Rastelli’s: At $89 for 4 10 oz strips, that comes out to $2.23 per oz.

Ribeye Pricing

  • Omaha Steaks: At $99.99 for 4 8 oz ribeye’s, that comes out to $3.12 per oz.
  • Snake River Farms: At $36 for 1 1.2 lb (19.2 oz) ribeye, that comes out to $1.88 per oz.
  • Kansas City Steaks: At $99.95 for 4 10 oz ribeye’s, that comes out to $2.50 per oz.
  • Crowd Cow: At $29 for 1 16 oz ribeye, that comes out to $1.81 per oz.
  • Porter Road: At $26 for 1 1 lb (16 oz) ribeye, that comes out to $1.63 per oz.
  • Rastelli’s: At $89 for 4 10 oz ribeye’s, that comes out to $2.23 per oz.

Food Box HQ Note: Not every service listed above offers the exact same type of each cut so I tried to find the most similar versions of each (for example, boneless instead of bone-in) to make the comparison as uniform as possible. That being said, this is a rough comparison to get an idea of pricing.

Omaha Steaks Confusing Pricing

Omaha Steaks prices out their foods individually but the bulk of the items can only be bought in multiples. For example, if you wanted to order their Butcher’s Cut Filet Mignons, the lowest amount you can order is 4 5 oz filets at $74.99.

Things do get a little confusing with the pricing at times because Omaha Steaks is constantly trying to get you to add more items to your cart the whole time you’re shopping. For example, I was recently trying to buy their bacon-wrapped filet mignons but at checkout, this is what it said:

Bacon-Wrapped Filet Mignon Pricing In Our Cart

To recap, 4 5 oz bacon-wrapped filet mignons came out to $109.99 but if I add “any other item” to my cart I will save $54.99 (50%). This pricing seems overly complicated in a way to confuse people into buying more.

My Trick To Find The Best Omaha Steak Deals, Coupons, & Promotions

Although Omaha Steaks pricing is confusing and (at times) very annoying, they run a lot of very steep discount promotions. Most of the promotions can only be found on their advertisements and mailers. However, I found a little trick for seeing what promotions they’re running without having to sign up for their email list and read their emails every day.

This website has an archive of all of their marketing emails so you can see which promotions they’re currently running and find the best deal for you.

Frequently Asked Questions

Since we first reviewed Omaha Steaks back in 2017, we’ve received a ton of comments and questions about their service. I rounded up all of the most common questions and their answers into this section to help anyone else who might have the same ones.

How do you cook Omaha Steaks foods?

Unlike traditional meal kits, Omaha Steaks doesn’t give you specific recipes to follow with their uncooked foods. And since the bulk of what they sell are meats, it’s important to understand how to best cook them or you could mess up the flavor by over or undercooking. Luckily, Omaha Steaks has a decent cooking chart here that explains the meat cooking process for grills (gas and charcoal), pans, ovens, and even air frying.

How long does Omaha steaks foods stay good in their packaging?

We’ve held on to frozen Omaha Steaks meat for over 3 months since purchasing it and haven’t had any issues cooking it after. It’s important to note that the meat has to stay frozen through this whole time, since it can spoil thawing and being refrozen. Omaha Steaks says that their meats are vacuum sealed to last for up to three months in a properly working freezer.

What grade of beef does Omaha Steaks sell?

Omaha Steaks does not publicly state what their USDA grade is.

How long can Omaha steaks stay in the shipping cooler before spoiling?

We’ve left our meat in its Styrofoam container for upwards of 6 hours from when it arrived on our doorstep (both Emily and I weren’t home when it was delivered). So this means that the meat was in the cooler for over 30 hours and there was still a huge block of dry ice in it. My rule of thumb for anything being delivered frozen is to ensure it is frozen when I open the box or else I consider it spoiled and contact customer support.

Pros & Cons Of Omaha Steaks

Now that we’ve gone in-depth on our experience using Omaha Steaks and how it’s evolved since 2017, let’s go over what they’re doing well and what could be improved.

Omaha Steaks Pros

  • They offer a ton of variety. In fact, Omaha Steaks likely has the most options out of any meat delivery services we’ve reviewed to date. This makes them the perfect one-stop-stop for a big dinner party or get together.
  • Their premade options are delicious. We’ve tried everything from their premade meals and sides to desserts—they have all been surprisingly tasty for being frozen.
  • They offer food “bundles” for extra savings. If you’re not looking to buy a la carte, Omaha Steaks has a variety of bundles that can be helpful for catering any size party.
  • It makes for a great gift. There’s a reason why Omaha Steaks is known as the de facto business gift. They have a ton of gift baskets and bundles, making it easy to customize the gift to anyone’s personal preferences.

Omaha Steaks Cons

  • The pricing can be confusing and annoying. Omaha Steaks substantially marks up the price of their individual items in a marketing maneuver to get customers to purchase more to “unlock” extra savings.
  • It’s not the best value. Omaha Steaks is expensive when compared to many other online-only butchers. If you’re looking for the best value, consider Crowd Cow, Porter Road, or Rastelli’s for high-quality at a lower cost.
  • The packaging is not environmentally friendly. There are many other ways to deliver frozen foods that are substantially better for the environment than styrofoam. I really hope Omaha Steaks updates their packaging to more sustainable methods.
  • Their meat grading, sourcing, and quality are unclear. When I went to research the meats in-depth I was surprised I couldn’t find any information regarding how they grade their meat, where it comes from, and if they use antibiotics or hormones. They could do a better job of transparency.

Final Thoughts: Who Is Omaha Steaks Right For?

Omaha Steaks is one of the tougher reviews we’ve done. On one hand, their food is delicious and they have quite a lot of variety. On the other hand, the way they price their foods is confusing and can lead to one-off orders being very expensive.

However, my main gripe with Omaha Steaks though is their lack of transparency. Nearly every other meat delivery company we have reviewed in the past has been upfront about where they get their meat, the USDA grade of their meat, and the quality (if hormones or antibiotics have been used). It was nearly impossible for me to find any information about these things in my research.

With all that said, Omaha Steaks may not be the best value but they do provide the most convenience and variety when compared to nearly every other meat delivery service we’ve tested. This convenience and variety makes them a great option for people who are hosting big parties, holidays, or get togethers where there will be groups of people eating.

Plus, I can’t deny that their food is delicious. Everything we’ve had in each box we’ve ordered since 2017 has had an abundance of flavor—from the filet mignons to the chocolate lava cakes.

Have a questions about Omaha Steaks we didn’t answer in this review? Have you tried Omaha Steaks before? Leave your comment below and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible!

Dan Scalco

Over the past 6 years I've unboxed and reviewed hundreds of different meal kits, food delivery services, snack boxes, and more. I created Food Box HQ as a way to share all of my experiences.